


A Wild, Clear Call

by marinarusalka



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Animal Transformation, F/M, Folklore, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-13
Updated: 2011-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marinarusalka/pseuds/marinarusalka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony makes a startling discovery about his ancestry. Pepper and Rhodey get stuck dealing with the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wild, Clear Call

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the merfolk ficathon on LJ. Thanks to Muccamukk for the beta.

Pepper wasn't sure what brought it on, exactly, but in the weeks after his confrontation with Vanko, Tony suddenly developed a consuming interest in his parents' old belongings. Boxes and trunks that had sat in storage in New York for nearly two decades began to arrive in Malibu by the truckload, piled haphazardly in the spare bedrooms. Tony, with his typical Tony-ness, rummaged through the boxes' contents with a great deal of energy and very little method, and the house quickly turned into an obstacle course of vintage clothes, old books, and yellowing photo albums.

"I thought you weren't the nostalgic type," Pepper said.

"I'm not," Tony insisted, despite the fact that he'd just spent over an hour paging through his parents' wedding album. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, with an opened trunk in front of him and three more stacked behind him. The room smelled of mothballs and old paper. "I'm just trying to be organized. You're always telling me to be more organized, right? So this is me, being organized. Isn't it great?"

"Organized. Right." Pepper looked down at the knee-deep clutter that covered the floor. "What are you going to do with all these things?" 

"Not sure yet." Tony shrugged carelessly. "Dad's notebooks need to be transcribed and archived properly -- the man could have the formula for cold fusion written in the margins somewhere for all we know. And Mom's clothes and jewelry -- some of the designer pieces are probably museum-worthy. Or maybe you could wear them. Here." He took a black velvet box out of the trunk, opened it, and took out a diamond and emerald choker that probably cost more than Pepper's condo. "Try it on. I bet you'd look fantastic in it."

"Tony." Pepper took a step back. "You know I can't take that."

"Why not?" Tony tilted his head back to look up at her, and lifted the necklace so that the gemstones caught the sunlight from the window. "It's perfect for you. Look, it even matches your dress."

Pepper's dress was, in fact, entirely the wrong shade of green, and also a _sun dress_ , and therefore completely inappropriate for a priceless necklace that was clearly designed for evening wear. All of which was beside the point, of course, because she and Tony had had a Talk about excessively expensive presents, not long after their first real date, and Pepper had made it very clear that she wasn't going to accept any. The tabloids were already convinced that she was a heartless gold-digger and that her entire ten-year stint as Tony's PA had been a sinister plan to seduce him and get her hands on his money. She wasn't about to give them any more ammunition.

"Shouldn't that be in a vault?" Of course, given Tony's security system, the entire house was a vault. Still, keeping a medium-sized fortune in jewels in a trunk seemed somehow inappropriate.

"Probably." Tony didn't sound very concerned. "Mom was always careless about that sort of thing. If she liked something, she'd keep it close at hand, and she liked this necklace a lot. I remember her wearing to practically every party she and Dad threw when I was a kid. You sure you don't want it?"

"Very sure," Pepper said firmly.

"Fine, be that way." Tony stuck the necklace back in its case, set it aside, and dug into the trunk in front of him again. "Let's see what else we've got here... Huh. Here's something you don't see every day." He sat up with an armful of what Pepper at first took for a fur coat until she saw the whiskered snout nestled in the crook of Tony's elbow.

"Ugh. Is that real?"

"I think so." Tony shook the sealskin out and laid it on the floor. It was in remarkably good condition, sleek and glossy. The dappled gray fur showed no sign of damage either from moths of from the normal passage of time. It made the empty eyeholes in the otherwise perfectly-preserved head look that much more unnerving. "I wonder why Mom had this. She never wore furs."

"I don't think this is meant to be worn." Pepper leaned in for a closer look. "I mean... it has a _face_."

"Creepy, isn't it?" Tony had a strangely fascinated look on his face as he ran his hands over the fur. "It must've had sentimental value or something. This is Mom's keepsake trunk, all her favorite things in one place." He held up an intricate ivory puzzle ball and a packet of letters tied with a silk ribbon, then carefully put them back again. "But I've seen all the other stuff before. This thing..." He held up the skin again, examining the head with a bemused expression. "I'm sure I would've remembered _that_ face."

"Maybe it's a rug," Pepper suggested dubiously. People had tiger skin and bear skin rugs, so perhaps a seal wasn't out of the question. A little tacky by Stark standards, maybe, but then again, Howard and Maria did live through the 70s.

"Maybe it's a cape." Tony stood and draped the skin over his shoulders. It was long enough that the tail fin dragged on the floor. Did seals normally get that large? Pepper hoped it hadn't been an endangered species.

"Please don't do that," she said, and broke into a coughing fit. Good condition or not, the fur had several decades' worth of dust on it, and Tony's movements had released most it into the air in a stifling cloud. Pepper coughed again, then sneezed. Her eyes began to water, and she rubbed at them with her hands. "Ugh. Now I'm going to look a mess all day, and it'll be all your fault. Do you have a tiss--" She lowered her hands. "Tony?"

Tony was nowhere in sight. On the floor at Pepper's feet, a very large, very _alive_ seal made a noise half-way between a bark and a honk and slapped its fins against the carpet.

Pepper let out a high-pitched yelp and staggered back a step, before recovering her composure and her balance.

"All right, Tony, I don't know how you did this, but it's not funny." She pitched her voice to carry to wherever Tony might be hiding. "Come out and get rid of this thing!"

This had to be some crazy practical joke, like the sort Tony used to get up to at MIT. Pepper hadn't known him back then, but she'd heard her share of stories from both Tony and Rhodey. Cars dangling off buildings, cows up on roofs... a seal wasn't that much of s stretch. They only puzzle was how Tony had managed the substitution so quickly. Pepper had only closed her eyes for a couple of seconds.

The seal slapped the carpet some more, and wriggled forward on its belly to butt its head against Pepper's shins. It didn't seem aggressive, but it clearly wasn't happy to find itself indoors. Pepper couldn't blame it. They really needed to get the poor thing back into its proper habitat before somebody found out. Tony already had SHIELD and the US Congress coming after him, he didn't need the ASPCA too.

"Tony! Come on, this has gone far enough! Jarvis, where's Tony?"

"I--" Jarvis hesitated in a manner Pepper had never heard before. "I'm sorry, Miss Potts, there appears to be some sort of malfunction with my sensors."

"Hronnnk!" The seal reared up off the floor, flapped its fins frantically, and flopped over onto its back with a thud. The fur on its belly was lighter than on its back, ranging from silvery gray to almost white. And embedded in its chest, right in the middle of a perfectly centered white patch, was the arc reactor.

"Oh my God," said Pepper.

"Hronnnnnnnk!" said Tony.

* * *

"I don't get it," Rhodey said. He had a dazed look on his face that matched what Pepper suspected was her own expression. "How can this be Tony?"

" _I don't know_!" Pepper tried to sound calm and in charge, but she could hear her own voice getting a little higher with every word. She took a deep breath and ducked her head to massage her temples for a few seconds before going on. "All I know is, he has the arc reactor. And according to Jarvis, Tony's life scans disappeared and the seal's scans appeared at about the same time."

"One-point-seven-three seconds apart," Jarvis put in helpfully. Pepper rubbed her temples some more.

"Unless some new evidence turns up,. I think we'd better assume it's Tony."

"Hronnnnnk!"

The mansion's master bathroom was huge, larger than the bedroom in Pepper's condo. There were marble and glass and chrome everywhere, a fully stocked wet bar along one wall, a large skylight over the tub. The tub itself was waist-deep and large enough to comfortably hold ten people; fifteen if Tony found them all sufficiently attractive. Earlier, while she waited for Rhodey to arrive, Pepper had filled it with cold water and dumped in a box of Mediterranean sea salt from the kitchen. Tony had seemed to like the arrangements well enough at first, happily splashing the water around and using one fin to turn the jets on and off, but his enthusiasm quickly waned. Now he slumped in the water, with his head propped on the tub's marble rim, and watched Pepper and Rhodey with big, liquid eyes that made Pepper want to reach into the water and cuddle him. She was no expert on the body language of marine mammals, but she was probably the world's leading expert in the body language of one Tony Stark, and to her he looked entirely dejected.

"We have to do something," she said.

"I know." Rhodey squatted in front of the tub until he was at eye-level with Tony. "Hey, buddy," he said softly. "I don't suppose you'd just change back if we asked nicely?"

Tony snorted wetly through his whiskers and slapped one fin against the water, hard. The resulting splash left both Rhodey and Pepper salty and wet from head to toe.

"I guess that's a no," Rhodey said.

"I don't think he meant to change," Pepper said. "It was the seal skin that did it." It made sense, sort of. As much as anything about this crazy day made sense.

"Magic sealskin. Right." Rhodey shook his head. "It sounds like some kind of fairy tale."

"Actually, I believe it might be," Jarvis said out of the blue. Pepper blinked.

"What?"

"Perhaps folk tale would be a more appropriate term." Jarvis lapsed into the faintly impatient, lecturing tone he always used when bestowing knowledge upon mere mortals. "Mr. Stark's current... condition is reminiscent of a number of folk tales from Iceland and parts of the British Isles."

"Selkies." Dim memories of a childhood picture book made Pepper blurt out the words. "I remember. They took off their skins to become human, then put them on again to change back into seals."

"Exactly, Miss Potts."

"But those are just stories," Rhodey said. "And anyhow, that's not even Tony's sealskin. It was his mother's."

"I am merely reporting relevant information." Jarvis sounded put out. "The apparently supernatural nature of the problem is beyond the scope of my programming."

"Thank you, Jarvis," Pepper sighed. She sat down on edge of the tub and stroked one hand over the back of Tony's head. The fur felt surprisingly soft against her palm, despite being wet. "Selkies," she muttered. "How do you get always get yourself into these messes, Tony?"

Tony let out a small, sad-sounding _hronnnk_ , and put his head in her lap.

"Maybe we should contact SHIELD," Rhodey said.

"HRONNNNNNNK!" Tony threw himself backwards into the tub with a splash that sent a good inch of water onto the floor. Pepper jumped to her feet with a yelp, and Rhodey staggered back.

"Okay, okay! No SHIELD." Rhodey held up his hands. "But you do know that if anyone has any useful intel on real-life selkies, it would probably be them, right?"

He did have a point there. "Could you find out what they know without actually telling them what happened?" Pepper asked. Rhodey gave her a long-suffering look, then sighed and shook his head.

"I'll see what I can do," he said.

"Thanks." Pepper gave him a quick, soggy hug. "Jarvis, see what else you can find out about selkies, okay?"

"Will do, Miss Potts."

"Also, see if any place around will deliver fresh herring in bulk."

* * *

Selkie stories were easy enough to find once Pepper went looking, but none of them were particularly helpful for figuring out what to do when your superhero boyfriend turned into a seal. The plots were depressingly repetitive: a human sailor of fisherman would steal a selkie maiden's sealskin, trap her in her human form, and force her into marriage. Eventually, the selkie would recover her hidden skin and return to the sea, leaving husband and children behind. 

"Excuse me, Miss Potts." Jarvis' voice distracted Pepper from her perusal of yet another badly-designed website with Celtic clip art in the margins. "But Mr. Stark is currently on his way to the living room, and I thought you might wish to intercept his progress."

"Tony is what?" Pepper snapped her laptop shot and leaped to her feet. "Has he changed back?"

"I'm afraid not."

By the time she got to the living room, Tony was already there, flopped down in front of the window with his nose pressed against the glass. A wet trail on the carpet indicated his progress across the room.

"What do you think you're doing?" Pepper demanded. Tony let out a soft huff and let his head sink down to the floor. Pepper's irritation vanished in a flood of sympathy.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know you can't actually answer when I talk to you."

It had to be awful for him. Tony was the most compulsively verbal person Pepper had ever met. He talked through work and play and sex, through meals and gym workouts and business meetings. He talked to any person within earshot, and in the absence of people, he talked to robots and computers and his cars. The neverending flow of words seemed to be a fundamental feature of how his mind functioned, and it had to be a misery, being reduced to barks and flaps.

"Okay." Pepper sat down on the floor next to Tony, and stroked one hand down his back. "How about... flap once for yes, twice of no, will that work?"

For a cute furry critter with big puppy-dog eyes, Tony could muster up quite a wicked glare when he put his mind to it. Still, after a few long seconds he smacked one fin against the carpet -- _flap!_

All right, that was a start. So what did one ask of a shapechanging seal, then?

"Are you all right?"

_flap... flapflap_

Yes and no. Fair enough. "Do you feel sick? Or injured?"

_flapflap_

Well, that was a relief, at least. "Did you come in here because the tub is uncomfortable?"

_flap_

"And the living room is better?"

_flapflap_

"Why then? Never mind, I know, yes or no questions." Pepper leaned against the glass, then turned her head to see what it was that Tony was staring so intently at. The view from the floor-to-ceiling window was composed almost entirely of blue -- half cloudless sky, half gleaming expanse of the Pacific.

Selkies were drawn to the sea. That was the one constant in all the stories Pepper had read. No matter how long they'd lived among humans or how many ties they formed, as soon as the opportunity to return presented itself, they went, with no hesitation. Trapping them on land was selfish and cruel.

Tony couldn't be a selkie. Pepper had seen baby pictures of him, newspaper announcements of his birth, his birth certificate and childhood vaccination records. There was no possible way Tony Stark could be anything but human. Except that humans didn't randomly change into seals.

Pepper looked down at Tony, who'd lifted his head off the floor and had his nose pressed against the glass again. Was there longing in his eyes, or was Pepper just projecting? All those tales of trapped selkie women were messing with her judgment.

"Do you want to go out there, Tony?"

_flap_

"But you know you can't, right?"

_flapflapflapflapflapflapflap_

"That's not very helpful."

Tony gave her a baleful glare, and his fur actually bristled under Pepper's hand. Pepper hadn't even known seals _could_ bristle. Maybe it was a selkie thing.

"I'm not letting you just swim off into the ocean," she said firmly. "Besides, you wouldn't know what to do with yourself. You'd get eaten by a shark, or get caught in a tuna net or something."

_flapflap_

"Would, too. And I can't believe I'm even having this conversation." Pepper shook her head. "Look, would you like it better in the pool?" The chlorinated water was no good, but she could have Jarvis drain it, and surely there had to be some practical way to fill it with seawater. The Pacific was right there, after all. Someone would come and do it, if she paid enough.

_flapflap_

Clearly, seal-Tony was just as stubborn and unreasonable as human-Tony. Pepper found this strangely comforting.

"I'm sorry." She rose to her feet. "But it's either house or swimming pool until we figure out a way to change you back. Jarvis, alert me if Mr. Stark tries to leave the house, will you?"

"Yes, Miss Potts."

"Actually, alert me if he tries to leave the main floor."

"Yes, Miss Potts."

"And have Dummy bring up some of the herring."

"Yes, Miss Potts."

* * *

Rhodey came back late in the evening, looking harried and carrying a thick manila folder under one arm.

"Nobody at SHIELD knows anything," he grumbled. "Or at least, nobody is talking. But I did get this." He tossed the folder onto the desk in front of Pepper. "Don't ask me how I got it. And if anyone asks, you didn't get it from me. In fact, if anyone asks, you haven't spoken to me at all. Ever."

"Uhm." Pepper squinted at the folder with deep suspicion. "What is it?"

"A copy of Howard Stark's FBI file from the 50's."

"Howard Stark had an FBI file?"

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "It was the 50's, Pepper. Everyone who was anyone had an FBI file." He opened the folder, flipped a few pages, and tapped one finger against a densely typed sheet. "Here. Read the bit about how he got married."

In June 1957, Howard Stark had gone to visit some friends in Scotland, and returned home two months later, engaged to Maria Carbonell. According to Howard's own story, Maria had rescued him from a flying accident in the Orkney Islands, though no one seemed to know exactly how or where. Even Tony had known nothing beyond the basic tale reported in the papers. The FBI, suspicious at having one America's top weapons designers suddenly turning up married to an unknown foreigner, attempted to inquire into Maria's origins and found... nothing. No school records, no medical history, nothing but a marriage license and some rather dodgy birth records that listed Maria's mother as dead in childbirth and her father as unknown. In any other circumstance, HUAC would've had a field day, but Howard Stark could exert a lot of influence when he wanted to. The FBI investigation had ended less than six months after it began, with no conclusions reached and no action taken.

The Orkney Islands, according to Pepper's research, were one of the places were selkie lore was especially prevalent.

"This," Pepper said in a shaky voice, "is very disquieting."

"Disquieting," Rhodey repeated in a faintly disbelieving tone. "Yeah. That's totally the word I was thinking."

There were no pictures in the folder; Rhodey must've only made copies of the text. But Pepper had seen enough photos of Tony's parents over the years to have a clear mental image. Howard had been a handsome man in his youth, but Maria had been truly spectacular. Like a movie star or a supermodel, with black hair and creamy skin and huge dark eyes with feathery lashes. Pepper recalled a society columnist from years ago describing her as an "unearthly beauty."

"You don't think--" she began, and broke off, reluctant to finish the sentence.

"I don't know." Rhodey sounded as reluctant to voice his doubts as Pepper herself felt. "The plane crash story is legit enough; Howard filed a flight plan before he left, and there are records of him reporting engine trouble, then losing radio contact. He fetched up on a beach in Kirkwall two days later, and pieces of the plane washed up over the next week. So if Maria didn't save him, somebody sure did."

"Her paperwork--"

" _Lack_ of paperwork." Rhodey glowered at the folder as if the pages inside could somehow be intimidated into coughing up new information. "Could mean anything. Small Scottish fishing villages in the early twentieth century didn't always keep the best records, and a lot of what they did keep was lost during the war. Plus, the Scottish authorities might not have been in a mood to cooperate if the FBI started poking around in their jurisdiction and accusing one of their citizens of being a Commie. And Howard had the resources to get documents faked if he really needed to, or to get people to look the other way if a document was missing."

"I can't believe we're even considering this." Pepper wasn't normally given to fidgeting, but now she found herself feeling too antsy to sit still behind a desk. She stood up jerkily, paced back and forth across the room a couple of times, and finally stopped in front of the window, tapping her fingers against the glass and staring at the ocean below. 

Was it possible? Could Howard Stark have really gone to Scotland on vacation and come back with a selkie bride? He couldn't have done it the traditional way -- Maria still had her skin in her possession, unlike all those trapped maidens in the stories -- but a death-defying plane crash rescue certainly qualified a meet cute, didn't it? Maybe all the society columnists gushing about Howard and Maria's "fairy tale romance" had been more right than they knew.

The beach below the mansion was narrow and sheltered. At high tide, the waves came right up to the cliffside. Pepper tried to imagine a sleek gray seal frolicking in those waves, then coming ashore and casting off her skin to become Maria Stark again. The image was too bizarre to take seriously -- or it would've been, if Tony wasn't currently eating raw fish out of a bucket in the master bath. In the years since she first met Tony Stark, Pepper had had many occasions to shake her head and think _how is this my life?_ but the current situation certainly topped them all.

"I don't like it either," Rhodey said. "But it's all we've got. If Tony's mother was a selkie, if that was her skin in the trunk, then I guess he... inherited it from her."

"But he's been human all his life." Pepper clenched her hand against the window. "Why doesn't he just change back now?"

"Maybe he can't," Rhodey said softly. "Maybe it's different for those who are only half-selkie, or maybe there's a trick to it that he doesn't know. It's not as if he can tell us, is it?"

"No, he can't." Pepper closed her eyes against the glare of sunlight on water, and leaned forward until her forehead bumped the glass. Now that Rhodey had put her worst fears into words, it was getting harder and harder to keep up even a thin veneer of calm. "So what do we do then?"

Footsteps behind her, barely audible on the soft carpet, then the warm pressure of Rhodey's hand on her shoulder.

"Give him time, I guess." Rhodey's voice was rough, which perversely made Pepper feel a little better. It was nice to know she wasn't falling apart alone. "Whatever shape he's in, Tony's still a hell of a smart guy. He'll figure something out. And if he won't, we will."

"Yeah." Pepper thought about the longing look in Tony's eyes as he gazed out at the ocean earlier. "Assuming he actually _wants_ to change back."

* * *

Days passed, and Tony didn't change back. Pepper covered as best she could. She had Jarvis phone Mrs. Arbogast, informing her in a convincing imitation of Tony's voice that Tony had jetted off on a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Fiji. It wouldn't have fooled Pepper herself, back in the day, but Mrs. Arbogast had only been Tony's PA for a couple of months and hadn't had time to learn all the tricks yet. Tony did have a beach house in Fiji. Pepper hoped it would take the press some time to figure out that he wasn't there, and longer still to figure out that he wasn't anywhere else, either.

Pepper cancelled or postponed every professional commitment she could get away with canceling or postponing, and spent all her free time at Tony's house, researching more than she'd ever wanted to know about Scottish folklore. It was amazing how many variations on the same basic story one could find when one started looking, and even more amazing how unhelpful all those variations were when all she wanted was a way to make her boyfriend stop being a seal.

Tony was not doing well. Even the move from the master bath to the swimming pool failed to lift his mood. He spent hours at a time gazing mournfully at the ocean, and his responses to Pepper's attempts at conversation grew more and more listless. And after a week, an alert from Jarvis sent Pepper sprinting from her room in the middle of the night to find Tony half-way down the stairs to the workshop. Pepper sat down on the step next to him, and he let out a half-hearted _hronnnk_ and propped his head on her pajama-clad knee.

"Tony," Pepper sighed. "Where do you think you're going?"

Tony matched her sigh with a deep, shuddering one of his own, and nuzzled her hand like a big cat demanding scritches. Pepper frowned at him.

"Don't play cute with me. Why do you want to be in the workshop, you don't even have thumbs."

"Hronnnk!" _flapflapflap_

"Watch your language, mister."

The workshop had an exit to the driveway outside, and to the access road to the beach. Was Tony really planning to belly-wriggle a quarter of a mile down a gravel road just to make his escape? Pepper suspected that if she asked, he'd simply refuse to answer. So she just wrapped one arm around Tony's neck and sat in silence. Tony's head was a warm, heavy weight on her leg. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend that it was the human Tony, the _real_ Tony lying there with his head in her lap.

Almost.

"Damn it, Tony!" Pepper curled forward and pressed her face into a fold of soft, dense fur. "I hate this. It's not fair to make me miss you when you're _right here_." She wanted to hear Tony's voice. To see his smile -- the small soft one he reserved for her, not the aggressively charming grin he liked to put on for the cameras. To put her arms around him and feel a familiar human body pressed against hers. She'd had a week of sleeping in Tony's bed with no Tony in it, and the ache of absence wasn't getting any easier to bear.

Tony huffed gently, and patted one fin against her hip in what was probably meant to be a comforting gesture. Pepper sighed into his fur and held him a little closer.

"I know," she murmured softly. "I know."

* * *

One more week and three more escape attempts later, Pepper gave in to the inevitable.

"I think we should let him go," she told Rhodey the next time he came over.

Rhodey choked on his coffee, and had to take a minute to mop up the spillage on the kitchen counter before expressing his reaction in words.

"Are you _insane_?"

"It's been two weeks," Pepper said. "He's not changing back. And he's miserable."

"So what, you're just going to let him swim off into the Pacific? He's not actually a seal, Pepper. He's _Tony_!"

"And he's trapped in a goddamn swimming pool," Pepper gritted out in her steeliest voice, the one she used to use to make Tony keep his appointments. "Do you really want to keep him there for the rest of his life? How do you think he'd like that?"

"It's not--"

"And how long do you think we could keep it up, anyhow? How long before some kid on a hang glider or a coast guard patrol in a helicopter flies over and sees him there? Do you want to be the one explaining to the press and the ASPCA why Tony Stark is keeping a seal in his pool, and why it has an arc reactor?"

"It's better than having to explain why Tony Stark has disappeared off the face of the earth!"

"We'll have to do that anyway," Pepper pointed out, "if he doesn't change back."

"Damn." Rhodey gulped down the remains of his coffee, set down his mug, and rubbed his face with both hands. He looked exhausted. Pepper reminded herself that Rhodey, just like herself, had been spending hours every day searching for a solution to Tony's problem. Except that unlike herself, he couldn't postpone his day job to do it. "Is there any way out of this mess that doesn't end with us getting completely fucked over?"

"Probably not," Pepper said glumly. "But we can at least make sure Tony is all right."

Rhodey lowered his hands to glare at her. " _All right?_ Do you have any idea how dangerous it will be for him out there?"

"As opposed to the safe life he had before, flying powered armor into war zones?"

"Well, yeah, there's that." Rhodey grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. "All right, fine. It's your call."

* * *

"Now remember," Pepper said, "that tag on your left fin has a GPS _and_ a vital signs monitor, so if something goes wrong, Jarvis will alert us and we can come get you. Try not to be on the other side of the ocean if that happens."

"Hronnnk!" Tony barked impatiently, and head-butted her knee. _flap_

"Actually, try not to be on the other side of the ocean in general. This is a very nice coast. I'm sure you'll find things to do."

_flap_

"And please don't swallow any plastic bags, or get eaten by a shark, or--"

_flapflapflapflapflap_

"I think he gets the message," Rhodey shut off the boat motor and made his way toward the stern.

"Right. Sorry." Pepper knelt on the deck and braced one hand against the railing, leaning down until she was at eye level with Tony. "I'm sorry we couldn't figure out a way to help you," she said. "Please take care of yourself."

Tony huffed and head-butted her again, but in the shoulder this time, and a great deal more gently than before. Pepper's eyes burned, and her throat felt suddenly tight. The boat lights blurred in her vision.

"Just go," she choked out.

"Take care, man," Rhodey muttered gruffly, and bumped his fist against Tony's chest in what Pepper presumed was a manly, military version of an emotional farewell.

There was a splash, and a ripple of moonlight on the water. Pepper lurched to her feet and leaned over the railing, but if Tony was near the boat, she couldn't make him out in the darkness.

"Can you see him?" Rhodey asked.

"No," Pepper said.

And then, because it had been over two weeks, and she had been far more calm and sensible and collected than anyone could possibly be expected to manage under the circumstances, Pepper sat down on the deck and burst into tears.

* * *

For the first few days after Tony left, Pepper lived in a state of perpetual fear, braced for Jarvis to pipe up at any moment to tell her that Tony was dead, or for the news to start screaming about an arc reactor-equipped seal roaming the California coast. As time went on, the fear receded a little, but it never quite went away. It wasn't so bad during the day, when Pepper was distracted by the demands of fielding increasingly forceful inquiries from Mrs. Arbogast, the board of directors, the press and Nick Fury, while Rhodey frantically covered with the military and Jarvis planted a fake trail of flight plans and credit card purchases that showed Tony island-hopping in the South Pacific. At night, with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company, all the worst-case scenarios crowded in.

Sometimes she wondered if it would be better to have Tony declared legally dead. Have Jarvis fly the armor out by remote control and arrange a suitably spectacular explosion. It would give closure to the rest of the world, if not to her, and free her to move on with the rest of her life. But doing that would mean admitting that Tony wasn't coming back, that she would never see him again. Pepper wasn't ready for that, not yet. Still, the thought wouldn't leave her alone, joining all the other private nightmares that kept her awake in the dark.

Which was why she was still only half asleep in the wee hours of the morning, when Jarvis abruptly turned the lights on.

"Miss Potts."

"Jarvis." Pepper sat up in bed, heart pounding. The bedroom window brightened, showing her a pale early-morning sky, the air still hazy with the marine layer. "What time is it?"

"Five-thirty seven A.M." One of the window panes flashed a routine and entirely unnecessary weather forecast. "I apologize for disturbing you at this hour, but according to my GPS readings, Mr. Stark is currently a mile off-shore and rapidly drawing closer."

"What? You should've woken me sooner!" Pepper scrambled out of bed and dove for her shoes. "Is he all right?"

"All vital signs indicators are normal."

It had been three weeks. As far as Pepper could tell, Tony had spent that time meandering up and down the coast and around the Channel Islands. And now he was randomly swinging by for a visit? Pepper wasn't sure if she was going to hug him or yell at him. Whichever she did, with her luck, there would be a paparazzo with a telephoto lens crouching on a cliff top somewhere to capture it on film.

It took Pepper less than two minutes to get her shoes on and throw a cotton sweater on over her pajamas. Three minutes to get out of the house, five more to sprint down the access road to the beach. The bottom part of the road was steep and damp. Pepper skidded down the final ten feet and stumbled onto the sand, breathless and starting to sweat despite the morning chill.

"Tony, are you-- oh my God!"

A wet, bedraggled, and perfectly _human_ Tony Stark sprawled at the water's edge, the sealskin tangled around his legs.

"Fuck." Tony sat up, patted himself down, and broke into a coughing fit. A wave broke over his head; he didn't seem to notice. Pepper knelt in the sand next to him, and he gave her a dazed look, shadows under his eyes like bruises.

"Good to see you, Pep," he muttered in a slurred voice, and passed out.

* * *

"You found _others_?" It made a certain amount of sense, when Pepper thought about it. If there were selkies in the Orkney Islands, there was no reason why there shouldn't be more off Catalina. Still, the idea felt uncanny in the way that the Scottish folk tales didn't.

"Uh-huh." Tony shoveled a handful of strawberries into his mouth, chewed vigorously and swallowed. "And let me tell you, it wasn't easy. You want to know the definition of awkward, Potts? Swimming up to random pinnipeds and going 'excuse me, are you a person in there?' -- _that's_ the definition of awkward."

"That can't really be what you--"

"And just so you know, sea lions get very insulted if you mistake one for a seal. It's like some kind of gang thing. Crips versus Bloods, only with fins. And fish. I'm never eating fish again, by the way. Can I have another steak?"

"You've had two."

"How about a cheeseburger, then?"

"Finish the strawberries." Pepper pushed the bowl closer to him. In the two hours since he'd regained consciousness, Tony had done nothing but eat and talk. Mostly eat, though the talking was starting to gain momentum in the last few minutes. "So you're saying that the only reason you wanted to go was to find other selkies?"

"I needed instructions, Potts." Tony reached across the table to snag a croissant. Despite his demands for steak and cheeseburger, he seemed not to really care what he was eating or in what order, as long as it wasn't seafood. "Dear old mom neglected to leave a how-to manual, and you and Rhodey and Jarvis weren't getting anywhere, and I couldn't do a damn thing what with all the barking and flapping and the luck of opposable thumbs, so I figured the only way out was to ask an expert. Good thing there was a local colony, huh? It would've sucked if I had to swim to Scotland."

"Tony." Pepper leaned forward over the kitchen table and hid her face in her hands. "God. I thought--"

"Do they let seals through the Panama Canal? Because it would've sucked even worse if I had to go around Cape Horn. I hear it gets pretty icy this time of year. Catalina was nice, though. And you know what, after all that, there wasn't even a real trick to it. The skin comes off when you go from sea to land, only you have to do it at the right phase of the moon. So see, it was a good thing you let me go when you did, otherwise I would've missed the window to come back today and we would've had to wait another month to-- oh, hell, Pepper, are you crying? Please don't cry." He jumped to his feet and came around the table, pulled Pepper's hands away from her face and kissed her palms. "It's all right, see? I'm all right."

"I thought I'd lost you," Pepper choked out. "I thought you were gone for good, and it was all my fault for not figuring out how to fix it, and there were a million ways you could've been killed out there, and--"

"I know. I'm sorry." Tony tucked Pepper's hands under his chin and held them there. His skin was warm and scratchy with stubble, and his own hands were trembling a little. "I hated that you couldn't know all this time. I would've told you what I was doing if I could. I would've, uhm... told you a lot of things. If I could. Which I will, now that I can. But you have to stop crying first. Otherwise I'll start too, and then we'll both look like crap when Rhodey gets here."

"Rhodey's in Washington," Pepper told him. She supposed Tony had been to busy eating to pay attention when she was leaving messages earlier. "Not everyone can put their whole life on hold to sit here and wait for you, you know?" 

"I know." Tony's hands tightened a little around her wrists. "It was a bad month for both of us. I promise not to do it again, okay?"

"Yeah," Pepper sniffed. "I've heard that one before."

"C'mon, that's not fair. I've only accidentally turned into a seal that one time. And I'm definitely not repeating that. Well, not accidentally, anyhow."

"No," Pepper said. "You'll just find some new way to drive me completely insane."

"Probably," Tony admitted. "But it'll never again be as insane as this, will it? From now on, no matter what I do, you'll be able to shrug and say, 'well, it's not as bad as that one time he turned into a seal.' In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the craziest thing that's ever likely to happen in our relationship. And we've already survived it, which means we can survive anything, right?"

"That's not funny," Pepper said, but she knew she was smiling, just a little. Tony always seemed to have that effect on her, when he wasn't driving her crazy with worry. "It might be funny in another ten years, when we can look back and know that it all turned out okay, but right now..."

"Too soon. I get it." Tony knelt next to her chair, still holding her hands. "I'm sorry, Pepper. It's not as if I _wanted_ to scare you. And if it's any consolation, I scared the hell out of myself, too. And I swear -- well, okay, I can't actually swear never to scare you again. But I swear never to do it in this particular way."

Pepper gave him a skeptical look. "Promise?"

"Cross my heart. Or, well, my arc reactor. Really, being a genius billionaire superhero is totally enough for me. I don't need to add 'mythological creature' to the list."

"Good." Pepper let out a half-hearted laugh. "That's nice to know."

"You believe me, don't you?" He looked up at her, all wide-eyed and earnest, as if her belief was all that was needed to make his promises be true.

"Yes," Pepper said. "I believe you."


End file.
